Video of ModNation Racers loading times. Warning: LONG

Wondering how long it takes to actually get into a race when playing ModNation …

ModNation Racers is a beautiful, fast-paced take on the kart-racing genre. Taking away much of the luck of Mario Kart, it adds a much-needed hardcore element to this sort of racing game. But it also brings loading times... long, long loading times.

People are mentioning this in reviews, but we wanted to show just how long it takes to get from the home screen to an actual race. Keep in mind that before we shot this video, we had installed the game to the hard drive.

The loading times in the game are incredibly annoying, and they grind the experience to a halt. Not only does it happen before races, it occurs even when simply exploring the content-creation tools. The review code given to us wasn't from a retail copy of the game, but after looking through the notes there is no mention of loading times being improved for launch; odds are this is how the game will act for everyone else.

We'll have a full review of the title before its release, but this is one aspect of the game that needs to be pointed out. Load times this long really hurt the experience of playing the game, especially one that seems like it would be perfect for a few quick races here and there. Disappointing.

That is the kiss of death, especially for a racing game. My roommates complained about the load times for Sonic and Sega All Stars Racing, which was about 3-5 seconds from the disc and 2-4 from the Hard Drive, because they felt that for such a fast game (which they loved) the loads were a little long. I can tell you right now they would NEVER play this. Speed and instant access are what they like to look for in games.

Personally, my computer could turn on and load a game of Crysis before this game could get to the start menu.

They might be trying to rush the title and will probably provide a patch later on. Still, shipping it like this wouldn't be right.

This is why I dislike the current generation more then the last... Console games should not ship knowing there will be patches to fix major functionality. Or patches at all. I still buy them, I like playing games, but I still mourn the loss of quality and reliability.

This is a major defect; but since you don't have a review ready, how is it appropriate to point this out? You indicated it's not the retail version that your evaluating and you didn't discuss the issue with them.

The reporting of this kind of defect can seriously hamper sales, even if the defect doesn't survive to the finished version.

This is a major defect; but since you don't have a review ready, how is it appropriate to point this out? You indicated it's not the retail version that your evaluating and you didn't discuss the issue with them.

This is the code they sent us to review. The embargo is up. Nowhere does it say "Active Internet Connection Required for Reasonable Loading Times."

Can't yet watch that video from where I am - but yeah, in this kind of game, long load times make no sense. I have this preordered and still plan to get it, but I may not hold onto it as long if the experience is stunted.

On the other hand - everyone, buy a set of weights and keep them by your console - during load screens, pump a few reps! Work out your arms while you wait!

May be all the servers are not online yet, the few that are may be overloaded, and the game keeps trying to connect and times out?

Then it is designed poorly.

I know you're great when it comes to games, but I have to seriously question your knowledge of networking here. It *has* to wait for the timeout before it gives up attempting to complete a network connection. Now, it can be argued that the devs should have picked a short timeout, but that would have adverse effects on many other aspects of the networking code.

Timeouts on a connection attempt are a STANDARD. You know, that thing you like to claim is a good thing?

Also, given that it isn't the final version, and that it isn't available for sale yet, what reason would the devs have for having all of the final servers up and running? And further, how can we be sure the networking problem wasn't at your end? It likely wasn't, but networking hiccups DO happen.

I'm not defending them, I'm just saying that in something as complex as a distributed network, there are bound to be teething problems. Just look how often "cloud" services have outages. And those are often HUGE companies. This is just a game.

I think you're a little confused. There is no networking going on. In fact, the networking functions of my debug PS3 are disabled right now. It's not timing out, it's merely saying that it didn't find the network.

After that, what you're seeing is the game loading the data. There are no servers at play, no online anything in fact. This is simply data loading. Having a game boot with no Internet connection is not a radical new idea, nor are networking problems at work here.

Okay, if the PS3 has no connection whatsoever, don't you think it would be a good idea to do a simpleIf !networkconnection then skiptimeout line of code rather than waiting for however long their idea of a timeout should be?

Plus, I somehow doubt it's waiting for that timeout. The loading times in the beta were absolutely horrendous. I tried to play this game a few times but when you're waiting over a minute between initiating the race and actually being able to race then it's just ridiculous to the point of wondering why you should care.

This game has so much potential and I really want to see it enjoyed by everyone who happens to play it. These loading times are a major turn-off for me and others. The games graphics are not spectacular by any means which makes it even more unreasonable. Hopefully United Front Games will fix this party-pooper before its to late as load times like this are unacceptable and do not warrant a purchase with my money. These loading times seem so long that a simple software update seems like a person blowing against the a strong wind. Time is money and I do not want to be wasting it staring at a loading screen.

I'm not defending the game (based on what I've just seen I'm crossing it off the 'buy' list for now) but I had to LOL at the huge dramatic sighs of the narrator. Like waiting for a game to load is a huge burden that's crushing his soul or something.

Again, NOT defending the game or saying this isn't a big deal, just wanted to point out the hamming it up was pretty funny.

People are mentioning this in reviews, but we wanted to show just how long it takes to get from the home screen to an actual race.

They also mention how aside from that it is an awesome game and usually give it a very high score. Too bad you didn't feel the need to mention that. Let's just harp on the big negative aspect of the game (which reviewers say can be forgiven) with its own article before posting the review. Just more fodder for the anti-PS3 comments.

...Too bad you didn't feel the need to mention that. Let's just harp on the big negative aspect of the game (which reviewers say can be forgiven) with its own article before posting the review. Just more fodder for the anti-PS3 comments.

Can't wait to see the review.

Ars has so far dumped a lot of praise on the game in previous articles and it's because of them that I even know about the game and have a good impression of it. This article is just pointing out a new find which we might want to know about. It's completely appropriate and justified.

This is what I was thinking. I was also thinking about how we put up with those load times back then and it seems strange that we would complain about them now, considering it took five minutes to load each level of a game sometimes.

Loading is such a weird gaming phenomenon. Almost every game needs some time to get it's shit together, be it a HL2-pause-for-15-sec, a hallway/elevator/other constricted area, the Unreal 3 texture-pop-in, Metriod Prime's doors, playing a pre-rendered cutscene, any way you do it it's just a way to mask time the system needs.

Even "seamless" games have problems; Uncharted 2 might not have any mid-game-load-downtime, but it takes forever to boot up. GTA has problems keeping up when you are driving fast.

Burnout 3 (PS2) is almost unplayable because of loading. I didn't play the crash mode in Burnout 3 because it took like 30 sec for a 25 sec experience. The best part of Paradise was the lack of forced downtime loading brings.

Sorry it took me so long to get back to reply at your accusation of me being a PS3 fanboy, but I was busy playing Splinter Cell Conviction on my 360. Kinda sucks I had to wait for 45 seconds for each Deniable Ops mission to start, though. Interestingly enough, even though I am not a journalist providing an objective article on how long I have to wait, I managed to go without sighing within the first few seconds.